Cons

Bottom Line

Cloudways is a Web hosting service with both affordable and powerful architecture, but there's no option for domain registration, and quality telephone-based support, and email costs extra.

21 Mar 2018Jeffrey L. Wilson

Cloud-based web hosting services are now very common, but Cloudways does several interesting things with its cloud hosting that make it stand out in a very crowded field. It lets you select from one of five platforms, including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, offers wallet-friendly pay-as-you-go plans, and even lets you sign up for a trial run without whipping out a credit card. The shine is dulled a bit by its unreliable phone support and lack of amenities, such as domain registration and included email. Still, this excellent cloud hosting service is well worth your time.

Getting Started

Like Liquid Web, Cloudways only offers managed hosting, meaning that the web host handles your website maintenance. As a result, the SMB-focused service stands apart from the more consumer-friendly DreamHost and HostGator which appeal to the DIY crowd, too. Cloudways similarities to Liquid Web don't end there, either, as I'll show.

Unlike most other web hosting services, Cloudways lets you build a site without spending a dime. You can sign up for a 14-day trial account by creating a username and password, or logging in using either Github or LinkdedIn credentials, which is a nice touch. Then, after you've logged in, you're tasked with selecting a content management system (CMS) from several popular and respected sources, including Drupal, Joomla, Koken, Magento, Media Wiki, Moodle, PHP Stack, Prestashop, SugarCRM, and, of course, WordPress. There's a lot of flexibility on display here.

This flexibility extends to the server selection, too, as you can build a site atop one of several infrastructure-as-a-service solutions, including Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud Platform, and Vultr. You also pick one of several server locations scattered around the country.

Cloud Hosting Plans

Cloudways leverages the resources of several clustered servers to balance your website load; it doesn't dabble at all in the traditional shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. Instead, the company offers several pay-as-you-go, hourly cloud hosting packages that only charge you for the amount of time you've used. For example, if you cancel a plan while 10 days into a month, you'll only be charged for 10 days' worth of hosting. Hosts like the Editors' Choice award-winning DreamHost and HostGator bill you for the entire month, even if you cancel just a week into the cycle. Cloudways offers traditional monthly billing, too.

The monthly web hosting plans start at $10 (for 25GB of storage, 1TB of monthly data transfers, 1GB of RAM, and a single-core processor) and scale upward to $1,035 (for 3840GB of storage, 12TB of month data transfers, 192GB of RAM, and a 32-core processor.) The high-end offering outclasses many web hosts' most powerful dedicated server plans. In fact, Cloudways' top-level specs have more in common with the SMB-friendly Liquid Web, which lets you outfit a server with an wild 512GB of RAM. If you prefer hourly billing, the aforementioned plans start at just over $0.01 and scale up to slightly more than $1.43.

Some Omissions

Unfortunately, Cloudways doesn't offer domain registration, so you have to secure a domain from GoDaddy or some other seller. Another URL-related downside: Cloudways' unusually designed back end makes it a chore to point that purchased URL to your hosting setup. I didn't have much issue connecting those dots upon exploring the online documentation, but the process may prove confusing to novices. Furthermore, unless they're dead set on Cloudways, I can definitely see users simply never returning if they have to go elsewhere just to get started.

The service's email offering is another issue worth noting, as Cloudways' plans come with zero electronic mail accounts. Instead, Cloudways—in conjunction with RackSpace—expects you to pay for your email at a $1 per email account per month. That may prove costly, depending on your needs. Most other web hosts provide at least some level of service as part of even the most basic plan.

Building a Website

Cloudways may not possess some of the typical web hosting elements, but building a site is a fairly straightforward affair. WordPress was my CMS of choice in testing, and the service made it easy to create a site in just minutes. I logged in with my Cloudways credentials, selected a theme, tweaked how pages and posts appeared, and added images. It was a trouble-free experience.

This particular WordPress flavor is of the managed variety, so your installation receives the white-glove treatment by auto-updating the CMS, performing automatic daily backups, and providing real-time site monitoring and WordPress-specific security. Cloudways also has useful one-click cloning (so you can quickly create duplicates of your apps and servers) and staging areas (so you can test website elements without placing them live on your site).

E-Commerce and Security

Cloudways' app library has many e-commerce tools, including the popular Magento and Prestashop platforms. I used Magento to create an attractive store in just a few minutes by dragging and dropping website elements.

In terms of security, as a managed cloud hosting platform, Cloudways engineers safeguard your installation from attacks by releasing regular operating system and firmware upgrades. In addition, Cloudways offers free Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates, which should be considered essential data protection if you plan to sell product. In addition, the recommended Rackspace email comes with Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication technology for added security.

Excellent Uptime

Website uptime is one of the most important aspects of a hosting service. While your site is down, clients or customers are unable to find you or access your products or services—and they might not come back. That's why I'm happy to report that Cloudways offers excellent uptime.

For this testing, I used a website-monitoring tool to track my Cloudways-hosted test site's uptime. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings my website and sends me an email if it is unable to contact the site for longer than one minute. I look at the data for the most recent 30 days for each site's review. In my latest tests, Cloudways proved very stable. In fact, it didn't go down once.

Customer Service

Cloudways offers 24/7 customer service, so you'll be able to reach someone around the clock. There's a catch, though. The only way you can immediately contact someone is via online web chat. You can fill out a form to request a call (either via phone or Skype), but it lacks web chat's immediacy. In fact, my scheduled noon call was more than four hours late. That's no good if you need to get a person on the horn immediately. It doesn't really match the image of Cloudways as a higher-end managed service, either.

On the upside, I never waited more than a few seconds before a Cloudways rep fielded one of my chat questions. The team is quite knowledgeable, too. The members fed me accurate information about the differences between cloud hosting and traditional hosting, as well as the nature of its WordPress hosting.

Cloudways refund policy isn't the typical 30-, 60-, or 90-day money back guarantee that you find with most other web hosts. In fact, the structure is so detailed that Cloudways' customer service team simply referred me to this link. It's a lot to digest.

An Excellent, Focused Web Host

There's a lot to like about Cloudways. The service has flexible cloud hosting plans, top-notch web-based customer support, and excellent uptime. It's a company you can count on to keep your site up and running. I can understand how the email and URL omissions could send someone packing to services such as Editors' Choices DreamHost or HostGator. Both are typically included with a web hosting plan. And some people won't like the limited phone support. If those caveats aren't dealbreakers, however, give Cloudways a chance. You may find it offers just what you need to get and keep your website online.

About the Author

For more than a decade, Jeffrey L. Wilson has penned gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for a variety of publications, including 1UP, 2D-X, The Cask, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. He now brings his knowledge and skillset to PCMag as Senior Analyst.

When he isn't staring at a monitor (or two) and churning out Web hosting, music, utilities, and video game copy, Jeffrey mentors, practices Jeet Kune Do, blogs, podcasts, and speaks at the occasional con. He also collects vinyl and greatly enjoys a craft brew.